Building appliances are commonly used to help manage and/or control environmental and/or other parameters within a building. Example building appliances may include forced air furnaces, boilers, water heaters, heat pumps, and/or other building appliances. In many installations, building appliances are required to meet certain operational safety standards. Such safety standards have been developed to help ensure the safe operation of such building appliances. In some cases, the safety standards require that a building appliance be shut down when an unsafe operating condition or other malfunction is detected.
In many installations, a building appliance controller is used to control a building appliance. The building appliance controller can be equipped with or coupled to a safety element that, when activated, deactivates at least a portion of the building appliance. As the functionality of such building appliances and/or appliance controllers increase, the complexity and costs of providing reliable safety features can also increase. Thus, there is an ongoing need to provide alternative building appliance controllers and methods of controlling building appliances that meet or exceed certain safety standards.